Request: Names

The very first time he saw her was at a club in Rome.

  She had a smile brighter than the sun. She carried herself like she hadn’t a care in the world. She was calm, unconcerned, completely absorbed in conversation with two other women her age. Eighteen or nineteen. But she looked so much smarter than other girls he’d seen of her age. More mature. Like she wouldn’t say yes to just anyone.

  Maybe that’s what drew him to her initially. He’d been with many other girls recently but this one—there was something about this one, something that surprised him. If he got nothing else out of this, he realized, he would have been perfectly content to learn her name and nothing more.  

  So he approached her. When he stopped before her table, she was the last of the three girls to look up. She raised one dark eyebrow questioningly, red lips curving into an amused smile. Her chocolate-brown eyes bore through him, giving him a feeling he hadn’t had in centuries.

  He returned her smile and held out a hand. “Would you like to dance?”

  Her expression changed from amused to flirtatious. “I was hoping you would ask,” she replied simply.

  She must have noticed him, then.
 
  The slightest of blushes crept into her cheeks. It was the first crack he’d seen in her carefully careless façade.

  Her hand was warm and soft in his. The music played slowly, other couples moving in circles about the dancefloor, skipping over the rhythm haphazardly.

  He frowned to himself, but soon realized he had nothing to worry about. She was a wonderful dancer. She kept to the beat as if she knew every note by heart. She moved with all the grace of a petal falling on a spring breeze. Her red dress floated around her as she spun, like waves on the sea.

  When the song ended, she grinned, tossing her black curls over one shoulder. “Oh, you’re a wonderful dancer. It’s so hard to find a good partner.”

  He found himself genuinely smiling for the first time in longer than he could remember. He bent at the waist, lifting her delicate hand to his lips. “It was an honor.”

  “Perhaps another dance?” she asked playfully. “As I said, I don’t often find dance partners as experienced as you.”

  “On one condition.”

  She furrowed her brow. “What is it?”

  “You must tell me your name, beautiful one, or else I will have to keep calling you just that: beautiful one.”

  She laughed, the sound like a mountain stream bubbling along its way. “You may call me beautiful if you wish.” She pulled him onto the dancefloor once again. “My name is Maria. Maria Di Angelo. And yours?”

  Hades let her lead him along. “Perhaps we should save that for another day.” He pulled her close as the next song began.

   "Does that mean I'll see you again?

  “Of course. My beautiful Maria.”